by Brad Ricca
“Did you leave your door open?” asked Uotila.
“Of course not! Have you checked your bags and boxes?” Within minutes, they found the same thing had happened to Uotila. All of his things had been emptied and then fully packed, hurriedly and unmistakably.
“Look,” said Juvelius. He pointed to his friend’s still-locked suitcase. It had been sliced open.
They called the manager again. He assured them that no man had traveled through this part of the hotel.
“But there is a tourist opposite us,” remarked Juvelius.
“He left early in the morning,” said the manager. “He got an apartment elsewhere.” They followed the manager down to the desk and looked in the passenger book. The man across the hall had written that his name was Blumenthal, and that he was from Smyrna in Greece. And that he was an “agent.”
Juvelius glared at Uotila.
They returned to Juvelius’s room. After locking the door, Juvelius began to pace.
“This is the first consequence of my visit to the rabbi,” said Juvelius. “I already thought I had misled him, but he had his own calculations.”
“Have you lost any important papers?” asked Uotila. He was also clearly rattled.
“I don’t think so. All my papers are sealed in the hotel safe … but wait…”
Juvelius searched a little with his eyes, then grabbed his Baedeker Palestine guide from the window shelf. He had placed some of his new ciphers from their trip to the Valley of Moses within its pages. He flipped through the book and stopped, then sighed. They were still there.
“What luck,” said Juvelius. “These translations are not so much dangerous, but still. The Hebrew text could be used to open others.” He sat on the bed in a heap. “If the Hebrew cipher were in rabbinical hands, it would have been an unfortunate accident. But this!”—he pointed to the guide—“was displayed too openly! He missed it! If he had just nicely put it in his pocket, the rabbi could have figured out the key! Now? He got nothing.” He kissed the dog-eared guidebook.
They went back to the house of the Englishmen that night and told Mr. Parker. He listened to the entire tale, then stood.
“We’ll be fine. But from now on, keep everything in the safe.”
Juvelius couldn’t believe that he wasn’t taking the matter more seriously.
“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” said Monty, “we’ve been invited to visit with the governor of Jerusalem this evening, and I must get ready.”
Juvelius must have seemed excited, because the next look that Monty gave him conveyed the message that it was just the English who were being requested.
The next morning, Juvelius came downstairs to the hotel lobby. He was surprised to see Mr. Parker waiting for him. He had a serious look on his face.
“You were right,” he said, as Juvelius sat down. He spoke slowly to make sure that Juvelius understood his English. “Last night when we went to the … you know … the servants were out to, apparently they stopped in the city park to hear some Turkish music. They … ah, apparently after getting into the whiskey.” Monty put his fingers at his temples and closed his eyes. “Anyway,” he said, raising his head again, “our house was searched, just like yours.”
“Were documents taken?” Juvelius was horrified.
“Nothing was taken. No documents. I had followed your advice and hid them, at least.” Juvelius nodded his head. Monty said the next part very slowly.
“I understand that the rabbi is probably the one behind this. I think I can admit that I made the mistake of asking you to go to interview him.”
Juvelius was surprised, but also pleased. He was also seized by the thought that this was the moment for him to directly communicate what he had been trying to write down.
“I have one more thing on my heart to you,” said Juvelius, searching for the right words, and trying to duplicate the ones he had been working on in his report. “I do not find Hoppenrath to be completely trustworthy either. Mr. Uotila and Mr. Wilson agree.” Juvelius told him in broken English about the horses, his wife, and the cipher. “That’s what would now I am worried about a written communication and work plan for his translation,” he said.
As Monty quietly regarded him, Juvelius knew that a shadow could easily fall on him at this moment. He knew that Mr. Parker greatly liked Hoppenrath. Everyone did. Juvelius thought about his words and spoke again.
“English gentleman,” he said, “who personalizes honesty, you cannot even comprehend dishonesty in another.
“Hoppenrath is not true,” said Juvelius. “He may be a spy.”
Monty moved closer to him. He spoke very slowly and watched Juvelius’s eyes to see that he was understood. “I think I have noticed that the spacing between you and Hoppenrath has not always been the best. And Mr. Wilson’s relationship with him, well, it’s a bit private.” He paused, full of meaning. “Maybe we’ll call it a family affair.”
As Monty stood up and left, he said something in Latin. Juvelius was confused and angry. Were his words misunderstood? Did he understand his? It began to cloud his mind beyond all repair. He didn’t know if it was the heat, the circumstances, or Jerusalem itself, but his feelings had a single, arrowlike trajectory. Juvelius wanted revenge on the rabbi, in ways he had never dreamed he would contemplate.
How could he think such things, he thought to himself. Mr. Parker was gone. Juvelius felt overwhelmed. These projects—perhaps unrealistic—were endangered by forces beyond their control. The heat of the East had surely, he thought, put him off balance. Juvelius felt tattered and torn by his surroundings and the otherworldly subjects within it.
In that lobby, with the people coming and going as blurs and shapes around him, a semi-imaginative atmosphere seemed to envelop him. As everything slid by him in waves, he saw someone walk up to him: a dark-eyed girl in a red silk belt, a graceful creature who caught his eye. She completely captured his thoughts, such that the only question in his mind, one that seemed more important than any questions about his more immediate problems was: Were her eyes brown or black?
Twenty
Dr. Juvelius
JERUSALEM, 1909
Dr. Juvelius sat at his desk, trying to write. He had no fear about what he wanted to say. He felt better; he knew that Hoppenrath would not make a naked grab for his report, but he still had to finish it. But this had become an impossible task, an immovable boulder. Juvelius sat there at his desk for half days, writing and wiping out, without getting anything decent down.
“Good man, take the quin and lay down!” Uotila said with concern. He handed Juvelius a glass of aperitif.
“I have taken three full already!” said Juvelius. “My ears hum.”
Juvelius threw a pen at Uotila and went for a walk.
He immediately felt more refreshed. It had just rained, and the air was pure for the first time in months. The dust of ages had finally been flattened to the ground. For a few moments, at least.
Juvelius stepped into his thoughts, with no drink needed. He saw himself in the alleys that led to the rabbi’s residence. He continued firmly forward to the last alley and the second door of the low house in the cul-de-sac. He wanted to talk to the Jewish girl again. She had been foremost in his thoughts lately. He made up his mind; he wanted to thank her. He was now certain that she had secretly tried to warn him of the rabbi’s intentions.
Juvelius walked for a long time among the bazaars and the Haram, the Dome of the Rock, the main streets and passageways. As he walked by a stand of steaming food, he saw Hoppenrath out of the corner of his eye. He was entering the Jewish quarter. Juvelius wondered if he was also looking for the rabbi’s address. Perhaps he had gotten it from Father Vincent. Juvelius followed him. After a few turns, Juvelius was stunned when he saw—with his own eyes—Hoppenrath bow his head inside the rabbi’s low doorway.
Juvelius did not understand. He had assumed that Hoppenrath was operating for his own concerns. Juvelius thought it not worth waiting and being discovered, so
he returned to town, near the main bazaar again. Juvelius opened his lungs with a great breath; it was relaxing here. As he took in the sights and sounds of the place, he saw, off a side corridor, a flash of white.
It was her! The Jewish girl! She was dressed in a muslin suit, in the pattern of fine European fashion. Juvelius took in a sharp breath. He went right up to her.
“I am sorry,” he said to her, “but I consider it my right to thank you!”
“Ah!” she said, remembering him. “I was so scared then.”
Juvelius was relieved at her demeanor. “Isn’t the rabbi your father?”
“He’s my uncle. I was born in Frankfurt. I saw that he put something in the bottles, and I was so scared. He doesn’t drink himself—no wine at all!”
“Let’s walk,” said Juvelius.
“Since the air was so fresh, I wanted to get out to see what color your eyes were. Brown or black?” He could not believe he was saying such things. She was a sophisticated woman, thought Juvelius, though still closer to the age and experience of a child. Her arms slid down and she smiled at him.
“Well, what color are they now?” she said.
“Black! Night black, sparkling and charming!” replied Juvelius.
Her natural feminine appetite had won him over. It was a moment, there on the street, that he could see so clearly. She shifted her shoulders and spoke.
“I will not have long to discuss with you, though. I am engaged…”
“Engaged? And so young!”
“Yes,” she responded. “With my cousin! We have been engaged since my childhood. I am now with my mother here for the first time. A month from now, when he turns twenty, we go get married.
“My uncle says,” she continued, “that it is written that whoever is unmarried, after twenty years, sins every day and every moment before the Lord.”
It was only when she was talking that Juvelius felt he could see how charming she really was. She had an essentially pure heart, he thought.
“And you will be happy?” he finally asked.
“I always used to think my husband Micha was my future.”
“And you will gladly leave big, beautiful Frankfurt?”
“Wherever he goes, I go where he is. There I am me, too. It’s our people’s way.”
“And your mother stays in Frankfurt?”
She nodded. There was a shy look on her face, and her voice shook a little as she said, “It has been said to mothers, ‘Your sons and daughters will be married to foreign countries, and without feeling sorry for you, you must leave them, knowing that they are chaste and happy.’ But now I don’t get married in foreign countries, but in Jerusalem!”
Juvelius was silent. He thought she was a saint.
“Now I have to leave,” she said suddenly.
“But before that, please, I would know your name!” said Juvelius.
“Rachel Baumgarten.” She uttered her name with great confidence.
“Rachel Baumgarten, goodbye—forever!” Juvelius bowed and kissed her hand.
As she left him, Juvelius felt that he had truly seen this girl, who had shown him an incomparable moral brightness. Her triumphant celebration of family ties and respect for ancestral customs was most worthy. That is why, he thought, the unbroken vitality of her entire landless refugee nation had endured.
When Juvelius returned to the hotel lobby, he had a fully developed fever.
Uotila chatted with him and soon realized his condition. He took Juvelius up to the room and wrapped him in strong felt coverings and gave him medicine for climate fever. Juvelius began to quiver.
In the morning, Juvelius felt quite brisk. The accumulated vile materials were out of his system. His overnight sweating had a purifying effect on his constitution, much like a thunderstorm in nature.
“Well, how are you?” Uotila asked as he entered the room.
“Much better. I have to get to work here,” he said as he eyed the desk.
“You slept for two days,” said Uotila. “You kept going on about poisons and Jewish girls.”
Juvelius seemed puzzled or perhaps ashamed. “I have to get to work.”
“You know,” said Uotila, “you tossed all night. It was only in the morning that you got to sleep with your eyes closed.”
“I don’t remember,” said Juvelius. “Though,” his mind wandered, “shortly before I woke up, I stole an ancient Hebrew home god from our own museum and hid it in a black-eyed Rachel’s saddlebag.”
Uotila stared at him, stupefied.
“Go write,” he said.
Sometime later, there was a knock at Juvelius’s door. It was Hoppenrath, with a warm smile on his face. He was looking for the new report to be translated. Juvelius let him in and gave him a long look through red eyes.
“I haven’t started yet,” he said.
Hoppenrath was genial and talked about some of his recent local adventures with his wife, including trips to the Suez Canal, the astonishing Petra, and even the summit of Mount Sinai. Juvelius nodded, somewhat in and out, of the moment.
“By the way,” said Hoppenrath, “What was the name you once mentioned that was drawn on the bust of Moses? Can you write it down for me?” He took a piece of paper from the table and slid it toward Juvelius.
Juvelius regarded him. “Moses’s bust is apocryphal, and I have never spoken to you about it. But perhaps the rabbi did when you met with him?”
There was a moment, or perhaps only the sliver of one, when Hoppenrath may have seemed surprised, but it passed so quickly as to be all but invisible.
“Now I remember!” Hoppenrath said. “Father Vincent mentioned it! Yes, I will be happy to tell him that he correctly interpreted what we found in that name on the pottery we found. Here you are!”
Hoppenrath took out a paper ticket from his wallet. “Four days ago, I brought a copy of the signature from the pottery for the rabbi to authenticate. See?”
Juvelius thought that Hoppenrath was as slippery as an eel. He was too cunning. He had taken everything into account.
After he left, Uotila was excited. “How did you know he visited the rabbi?”
“I followed his footsteps in the Jewish quarter,” said Juvelius. “But notice how wise he is: I went to the rabbi three days ago. He claims to have visited the rabbi the day before me.”
“But he went there yesterday? After all the burglaries!”
“Oriental diplomacy is different than Western,” said Juvelius. “It’s a good idea to go into the enemy’s camp without them knowing it.”
“What about Moses’s bust? How did he know that?”
“Hoppenrath is a deceiver. He knows that the bust is important. The rabbi knows that. That’s why he seeks the name. The rabbi is like a roaring lion searching for a lost key. Hoppenrath went to the rabbi yesterday to find out about our communication.”
Juvelius and Uotila got to work on the document—together this time. Juvelius finished it in Swedish and passed it to Uotila to translate to English. They did not drink. By the next day, it was done, with just a little bit of translation left. Hoppenrath had been by twice to ask for the report, but Juvelius lied each time without remorse. When he left the second time, Juvelius knew that Hoppenrath knew the truth—that Juvelius had included his thoughts on the tomb of Moses in the new report.
Juvelius also knew that Hoppenrath was going to try to steal the document.
“In a couple of hours, the translation will be ready,” said Uotila. “It’s already dark. I can take the papers for you to Captain Parker tonight. Hoppenrath won’t be expecting that. I’ll wear a dark suit. Nobody will see me.”
“Neither of us goes tonight,” said Juvelius, quite seriously. “The consequence could be a dagger in your back. The manuscript can wait for tomorrow.”
They finished the papers and signed them. It was then that Juvelius knew it would be impossible to stop his faithful friend. Dressed in black, Uotila took the papers and exited from the back door of the hotel. He walked across the
courtyard and out into the street before he disappeared. Juvelius felt a temporary pang of regret. Uotila was nothing if not versatile. He would be fine.
Fifteen minutes later, Uotila appeared in the back courtyard, limping. When he knocked at the room door, he was hoarse and breathless. He held up his left hand; one of his fingers dangled there, lifeless and destroyed.
After he collapsed onto a chair, Uotila took a drink and related his story. Two thugs had started to follow him. He was soon running for his life through the dark streets. Uotila wished he had his revolver, but it had been seized at customs. At one turn, he hid on the ground behind a corner, but fell into some building stones. It was then that they attacked him. He held up his hand again. He crawled back and finally got to the hotel. He was whining as he spoke; he was still in tremendous pain. Juvelius was hurting for his friend but also feared the worst. It was then that Uotila, with his other hand, pulled out the report, intact, from the back of his shirt.
A doctor was summoned to the room. The damaged finger was set. Uotila had also sprained his leg. He was given ice and bandages. “In three weeks,” the doctor said, “he can get back on track.”
“Can’t he come back with me to Finland?” begged Juvelius “We would travel as comfortably as possible, the shortest way.”
The doctor shook his head: “He would then have a limp for the rest of his life.”
Juvelius looked at his friend. As he rested, Uotila finally fell into a fitful slumber. Juvelius returned to his desk.
In the morning, Juvelius was greeted in the lobby by Mr. Parker and some of his men, who were there for the report. Overnight, Juvelius had added a new epilogue about the incident. Mr. Parker assured Juvelius that they would implement the highest possible security measures to safeguard the document, even involving the English consulate. Juvelius asked him, in halting English, if there was any reason to suspect that Hoppenrath informed the rabbi about the existence of the report.
